


O is for Outcast

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2132403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Toby forgot that he hadn't always been the class or family outcast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O is for Outcast

**Author's Note:**

> Any mistake in the American school system is my own (I am from England and am used to a different school system). I worked out the ages of Toby and Alison in the flashback from the fact that he tells Emily in The First Secret that Marion had been dead a year then and if I have it right that episode was set when the girls were in ninth grade, so given that Marion was alive in the flashback, eighth grade is the oldest they can have been. I was surprised to realise how young they'd actually have been then.
> 
> Also, the non-con really is only a vague reference that if anything is less explicit than in canon, and is only there because it plays such a big part in Toby being in the situation that he's in, but better warn that it's referenced anyway.

He’d never been the most popular guy in school. But sometimes Toby forgot that he hadn’t always been the class outcast.

There wasn’t a lot that Toby didn’t feel he could talk to Spencer about, but he never intended to tell her that it had all started, as so many things in Rosewood seemed to, with her best friend Alison. Although was that even fair? Toby had to admit that he kept people at a distance and was worried about inviting friends over to his house even before the incident with Alison, because he could never quite predict what state his mother would be in at any given time, so his outcast status could have happened anyway. Alison had just invited herself, but no one ever turned away Alison DiLaurentis. Nobody, that is, except Toby Cavanaugh.

At the time he’d ordered Alison out of the house, the fact that he was condemning himself to life as an outcast for the rest of his time at Rosewood Middle School and the beginning of Rosewood High didn’t even matter to him. He was just worried about his mother, and why she’d only just got out of bed at 4pm. That had been happening a lot lately. Toby knew that his dad was also worried about her. A few days ago, Marion had lost it with Daniel over something minor. And yet sometimes Toby could see the old Marion peeping through, and knew she was still in there somewhere.

He got to school the next day to find that Alison had told the entire school a totally exaggerated version of the story. “The woman belongs in Radley,” Alison whispered, crossing her eyes and making faces, smirking every time Toby walked by.

A few weeks later, that was where she was taken.

And a few weeks after that, Daniel got the call that he and Toby had been dreading.

When Marion died, the teasing stopped and even Alison had the grace not to say anything. Toby did wonder afterwards whether her friends had had a hand in that. If anything, people seemed not to know what to say to him, and kind of avoided him. Toby didn’t care. He preferred people to leave him alone at the time.

In theory, Rosewood High, where not everyone had known him from middle school, should have been a fresh start. But enough people from his middle school had joined him in high school that the story had spread, and Toby didn’t find it any easier making friends there. And Jenna’s presence in town didn’t help. Toby didn’t know how she did it. She’d been in town five minutes and already she was invited to Noel Kahn’s Halloween party? Toby had gone to school with Noel Kahn his entire life and never once scored an invite to one of his parties. Of course, he thought the guy was a dick and doubted he’d have gone anyway. But it still brought it home to him that he’d never been asked.

His dad thought that his issues with Jenna stemmed from the fact that the date that Helena and Jenna moved in so closely coincided with Marion’s death. (Which wasn’t the smartest move on Daniel’s part, it was true, and Toby wished he had put it off a little longer.) He probably wouldn’t have believed Toby if he had tried to tell him what was really going on.

It hadn’t taken long before Jenna had started her tricks of accidentally on purpose dropping her towel when she stepped out of the shower and threatening to tell their parents that he’d been spying on her. Toby didn’t think she’d actually done it, but the rumour did end up circulating amongst his class that he was anyway. He wondered if maybe he’d been a bit more open with people in eighth grade, if he’d tried harder to let people into his life, maybe he’d have had friends who wouldn’t have believed it. But he’d made the stupid decision to keep the wall up between himself and the rest of his class, and now he was stuck with it. There had been that moment when Emily Fields had come over and talked to him when he was helping unload Helena and Jenna’s van, and Toby had wondered whether she might become a friend one day. But then he’d realised it probably wasn’t going to happen. She was in Alison’s group, after all. Why would she lower herself to talk to Toby? She was probably just like the rest of them, deep down.

And maybe if he hadn’t allowed his outcast status to develop, Alison wouldn’t have used him to get her revenge on Jenna. Toby didn’t know what had given Alison the idea to pretend that he’d been spying on her and her friends; at one point he’d thought Alison had something against him, but now he’d come to the conclusion that it was directed at Jenna herself.

In some ways, reform school, away from everyone who had ever shunned him, had been a relief. He was around people who had some idea what it was like to be rejected by the world. And it was certainly easier than being at home once he’d served his time. His father and stepmother believed the official version of what had happened to Jenna. Helena could hardly look at him, the person she held responsible for the blinding of her beloved Jenna. Daniel just looked at him with this puzzled frown on his face, and sometimes he tried to ask Toby why he’d done it, saying that it wasn’t like him. If Daniel had known for certain that Toby was innocent, Toby knew that he wouldn’t have just left him there in the detention centre. But at the same time, it bothered him that Daniel hadn’t somehow just known. As for Jenna, Toby just tried to keep out of her way as far as possible. He’d hoped that she’d stay away from Rosewood after Alison had threatened her, but instead, she’d come back, and Toby wondered whether he’d ever really get away from her. 

Sometimes he wondered how things would have been different if he’d just told the truth from the start, either about what Jenna was doing to him or about how she’d really been blinded. Maybe he wouldn’t have been an outcast among his own family as well as at school if they knew the stink bomb was nothing to do with him, but he also wouldn’t have managed to escape from Jenna, either. Other times, he told himself he was being stupid. He’d had enough opportunities to tell Daniel the truth about Jenna long before Alison found out, and hadn’t done so because he hadn’t thought he’d be believed then, either, and Daniel hadn’t suspected a thing. When he was first accused of killing Alison, there was a big part of Toby that saw no point in defending himself, because no one would believe him then, either.

But now he has got a group of friends who believe in him, who see the real Toby. Emily had been the first to open up to him, and now he has her, Caleb, Hanna, Aria, Paige. And he has his relationship with Spencer.

Even as he approached Mona about working with her and her A team to protect Spencer, he knew that if everything went wrong, he could end up jeopardising everything he had, and find himself the town outcast once again. But he’d do whatever it took to make sure that didn’t happen. Spencer and her friends had believed in him when no one else had, and now it was his turn to do something for them.


End file.
